Trapping Zero

“Good idea.” She ducked into the bathroom. Maya started to follow, but Reid quickly grabbed her by the arm.

“Wait. Maya… I have to go.”

She blinked at him. “What?”

“There’s something I have to do,” he said quickly. “I have an appointment.”

Maya raised an eyebrow warily. “Doing what?”

“It has nothing to do with the CIA. At least, not directly.”

She scoffed. “I can’t believe this.”

“Maya, please,” he pleaded. “This is important to me. I promise you, I swear, it’s not fieldwork or anything dangerous. I just have to talk to someone. Privately.”

His daughter’s nostrils flared. She didn’t like it one bit, and worse, she didn’t truly believe him. “What do I tell Sara?”

Reid had already thought of that. “Tell her there was a problem with my credit card. Someone back home trying to use it, and I have to get that cleared up so that we don’t have to leave the ski lodge. Tell her I’m right outside, making phone calls.”

“Oh, okay,” Maya said mockingly. “You want me to lie to her.”

“Maya…” Reid groaned. Sara would be exiting the bathroom at any moment. “I promise you I will tell you all about it afterward, but I just don’t have the time right now. Please, go in there, have a seat, and watch the movie with her. I’ll be back before it’s over.”

“Fine,” she agreed reluctantly. “But I want a full explanation when you’re back.”

“You’ll get one,” he promised. “And don’t leave that theater.” He kissed her forehead and hurried away before Sara came out of the bathroom.

It felt awful, once again lying to his girls—or at least keeping the truth from them, which as Sara had astutely pointed out the night before, was pretty much the same as lying.

Is that how it’s always going to be? he wondered as he hurried out of the museum. Will there ever be a time that honesty is really the best policy?

He hadn’t just lied to Sara. He had lied to Maya as well. He had no appointment. He knew where Dr. Guyer’s practice was located (conveniently close to the Swiss National Museum, which Reid had considered in his plan) and he knew from an anonymous call that the doctor would be in today, but he did not dare leave his name or make a formal appointment. He didn’t know who this Guyer was at all, other than the man that had implanted the memory suppressor in Kent Steele’s head two years earlier. Reidigger had trusted the doctor, but that didn’t mean Guyer didn’t have some kind of link to the agency. Or worse, they could be watching him.

What if they knew about the doctor? he worried. What if they’ve been keeping tabs on him all this time?

It was too late to concern himself with that now. His plan was simply to go there, meet the man, and find out what, if anything, he could do about Reid’s memory loss. Consider it a consultation, he joked to himself as he walked briskly down Löwenstrasse, parallel to the Limmat River and towards the address he had found online. He had about two hours before the documentary at the museum was over. Plenty of time, or so he assumed.

Dr. Guyer’s neurosurgery practice was located in a wide, four-story professional building right off a main boulevard and across a courtyard from a cathedral. The structure was medieval in architecture, a far cry from the bland sort of American medical buildings he was accustomed to; it was nicer than most hotels Reid had stayed in.

He took the stairs up to the third floor and found an oak door with a bronze knocker and the name GUYER inscribed on a brass plate. He paused for a moment, unsure of what he would find on the other side. He wasn’t even certain of how common it was for neurosurgeons to have private practices in upscale buildings in Old Town Zurich—but then again, he couldn’t recall ever needing to visit one before.

He tried the knob; it was unlocked.

The Swiss doctor’s taste and affluence was immediately apparent. The paintings on the walls were mostly Impressionist, colorful open compositions in ornate frames that looked as if they cost as much as some cars. The van Gogh was most definitely a print, but if he wasn’t mistaken the lanky sculpture in the corner appeared to be an original Giacometti.

I wouldn’t even know that if it wasn’t for Kate, he thought, reinforcing his reason for being here as he crossed the small room towards a desk on the opposite side.

There were two things that immediately caught his eye on the other side of the reception area. The first was the desk itself, carved from a single irregularly-shaped piece of rosewood with dark, swirling patterns in the grain. Cocobolo, he realized. That’s easily a six-thousand dollar desk.

He refused to let himself be impressed by the art or the desk—but the woman behind it was another matter. She regarded Reid evenly with one perfect eyebrow arched and a smiled on her pouting lips. Her blonde hair framed the contours of an exquisitely shaped face and porcelain skin. Her eyes appeared too crystalline blue to be real.

“Good afternoon,” she said in English with only a slight Swiss-German accent. “Please have a seat, Agent Zero.”

CHAPTER NINE

Reid’s fight-or-flight instinct kicked in immediately at the receptionist’s words. And since it was clear to him that he wasn’t going to fight this woman—mostly clear, anyway—he decided to run. But halfway back to the door he heard a loud click.

The doorknob rattled, but did not move.

He spun and saw the woman’s hand beneath her expensive desk. There must be a button. A remote locking mechanism.

This is a trap.

“Let me out,” he warned. “You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

“I do,” she replied. “And I assure you, you are in no danger. Would you like some tea?” Her tone was pacifying, as if she was dealing with a schizophrenic that had skipped their meds.

Words nearly failed him. “Tea? No, I don’t want tea. I want to leave.” He slammed his shoulder against the heavy door, but it would not budge.

“That won’t work,” the woman said. “Please don’t hurt yourself.”

He turned back to her. She had stood from her desk and held her hands out in a non-threatening manner. But she locked you in here, he reminded himself. So maybe you will fight this woman.

“My name is Alina Guyer,” she said. “Do you remember me?”

Guyer? But Reidigger’s letter said the doctor was a “he.” Besides, Reid was fairly sure he wouldn’t forget a face like that. She was downright stunning.

“No,” he said. “I don’t remember you. I don’t remember ever being here and it was a mistake to come here. If you don’t let me out, bad things are going to happen…”

“My god,” said a hushed male voice. “It’s you.”

Reid immediately put up his fists as he turned towards the new threat.

The doctor—presumably, since he wore a white coat—stood in the threshold of a door to the left of the cocobolo desk. He had to be in his late fifties, if not sixty, though his green eyes were keen and sharp. His entirely white hair was trimmed neatly and impeccably parted. His tie, Reid noted, was Ermenegildo Zegna, though he wasn’t sure how he knew that.

Most important of all, however, was that the doctor looked entirely awestruck by Reid’s presence.

“Dr. Guyer, I presume?” he said breathlessly.

“I always thought you might come back,” the doctor said, a wide smile breaking upon his face. He had a similar Swiss-German accent as his receptionist, who he turned to as he said, “Alina, darling, cancel my appointments. Hold my calls. Keep the lock on. We are closed for today.”

“Of course,” said Alina as she slowly sank back to her chair, her lake-like eyes not leaving Reid.

“Come!” Guyer motioned for Reid to follow. “Please, come. I promise you are in the company of friends here.”

Reid hesitated. “You understand I might be a little distrusting.”

Guyer nodded appreciably. “I understand we have a lot to discuss.” He turned and vanished through the doorway.

This feels wrong. They had a remote door lock, no patients present, and a small fortune in furniture. But he wanted answers, so Reid ignored his instinct to flee and followed the doctor.

Before he went through the doorway the receptionist—who Reid had surmised was Guyer’s wife—glanced up at him with a thin smile and asked, “About that tea?”

“Maybe something stronger, if you’ve got it,” Reid muttered.

The walls of Guyer’s office held an impressive number of framed certifications and diplomas, as well as an array of photographs of various travels and achievements. But Reid barely glanced at them. He didn’t care about anything this doctor had done other than the single procedure Guyer had performed on his head.

The doctor pulled open a desk drawer and took out a notebook and pen, and then sat heavily in his chair, beaming at Reid like he was Christmas morning.

“Please,” he said. “Have a seat, Agent Zero.” Guyer sighed. “I always suspected you might return here. I just didn’t know when. I assumed the implant would eventually fail—if you survived—but only two years? That is simply shoddy craftsmanship.” He chuckled as if he had told a joke. “Now that you’re here, I have a thousand questions. But I’m afraid I don’t know where to start.”

Reid lowered himself into a chair opposite Guyer’s desk, keeping his guard up and his periphery on the door behind him. He glanced down at his watch and saw a message from Maya: Sara bought it. You’d better be here when the movie is over.

Right, he thought. No matter what happened here, he couldn’t forget that he was on a schedule. “I know where to start,” Reid said. “What do you mean the implant would eventually fail?”

“You know where this technology was acquired, yes?” the doctor asked.

Reid did. Alan Reidigger had stolen it from the CIA; in fact, the eccentric tech engineer Bixby was a co-inventor of the memory suppressor. “Yes,” he answered.

“Well, your friend Mr. Reidigger made me a deal,” said Guyer. “He did not only bring me the memory suppressor, but also the schematic upon which it was built so that I might attempt to copy its technology. However, upon studying it, I saw the flaw in its design. It was, after all, just a prototype. I estimated that it would begin to fail after five or six years.”

“Begin to fail?” Reid repeated. “So these memories would have come back to me eventually anyway?”

“Well… yes,” the doctor said blankly. “Is that not why you’re here? You have started to recover the memories that were suppressed?”

“Not quite. Iranian terrorists tore the implant out of my head.”

Dr. Guyer’s expression fell slack. “Oh,” he said empathetically, “that is most unfortunate. You poor man… Your mind must be a jumbled mess.”

“It is. Thanks,” Reid said flatly. “What about the other part? You said ‘if I survived.’ What does that mean?”

Guyer looked at his desk as if there was something very interesting there. “I think that question would be best answered by your colleague Mr. Reidigger.”

“He can’t answer,” Reid told him. “He’s dead.”

Guyer seemed extremely troubled by the news. He folded his hands reverently on the desk with his brow furrowed, the creases in his forehead aging him several years. “I am very sorry to hear that,” he said quietly. “He seemed a good man. He went to great lengths to help a friend.”

“That may be so, but he’s not here,” Reid said simply. “I am. And you didn’t answer my question.”

The doctor nodded. “Yes. Well. It is no simple answer, nor one you may want to hear…”

“Try me.”

Guyer sighed. “You and Mr. Reidigger wanted your memories suppressed so that you might live out your days with your family, blissfully unaware of the hardships you had faced. But both of you thought that your agency would find you eventually and… and silence you.”

What? Reid could not believe what he was hearing. This entire time he had thought that the purpose of the suppressor was for him to return to a normal life, away from the CIA and everything that had come with it. “You’re suggesting that I knew, or thought, I would be killed? And I still agreed to this?”

“That is correct, Agent Zero.”

Reid shook his head. Why would I do that? Why would I take away anything that would have given me a fighting chance? It felt as if he had condemned himself to some sort of memory hospice. He never imagined he would ever think it, but the Iranians’ intrusion into his home on that night in February was suddenly welcome. Without it, he never would have remembered his sordid past, or the truth about his wife’s death, or anything about the conspiracy…

Then he realized. That was exactly why he did it—so that whatever time he had remaining wouldn’t be lived in heavy secrets and lies. Everything he knew, everything he had shared with his girls and everything he still kept from them, felt as if it was slowly eating away at him. If he had truly believed that the agency would eventually take him out anyway, then the suppressor would have allowed him to live without the weight of his past on his shoulders.

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